Gardening Complete: How to Best Grow Vegetables, Flowers, and Other Outdoor Plants

Gardening Complete is the most up-to-date and complete guide to gardening for homeowners. Inside, eight of North America’s top gardening experts—and Cool Springs Press authors—present 19 subjects of critical interest to anyone who wants to learn or broaden gardening skills. Whether your main interest is in designing landscapes and gardens, ornamental gardening to make your yard more attractive, or gardening to provide nutritious edibles for the family table, this book will become your definitive source of information. It is intended for serious beginning to intermediate gardeners, but even veteran gardeners will be intrigued by what these experts have to say about core gardening skills and common horticultural subjects. Gardening Complete is a practical book that demonstrates how to accomplish the routine activities of gardening and beyond, including: Planning and planting your garden Essential care for the garden during the growing season Dealing with pests and diseases Harvesting fruits and vegetables Attracting pollinators Container, vertical, and raised bed gardening techniques While many gardening books focus on regional plant species or devote large sections to some form of plant catalog, this book is different. Gardening Complete serves not only as a self-contained manual for gardening skills and information in all regions, but also as a sampler that may help you determine where to focus your gardening hobby in the future or even help you identify authors you’d like to explore further. Each of the eight authors has an impressively broad background in publishing and lecturing on gardening, and you may discover a new favorite writer in these pages. We haven’t just allowed these authorities to express their individual views—we’ve encouraged them to do so. As is true in a healthy garden, we’ve aimed at diversity for this book. This book is not an organic gardening book per se, but if you have any previous familiarity with Cool Springs Press or any of these authors, you will know that we tend to take a low-impact approach to gardening. Thus, our authors generally offer advice that is gentle to the soil, to the environment, and to beneficial insects and animals. Success in your yard and garden awaits you with the help of Gardening Complete. Our authors are among the most passionate gardeners you will ever meet, and they have helped thousands of home gardeners just like you.